Fat Man Blues: A Hard-Boiled and Humorous Mystery (The Tubby Dubonnet Series Book 9) (12 page)

Tubby did not.

“She tells me to go out of my way to cultivate male friends.”

That cracked Tubby up.

“That’s the way it is,” Mathewson said. He laughed, too.

“How about another beer?” Tubby offered.

“Okay. But this one’s on me.”

* * *

After a couple more, Tubby came back to the topic. “I know it’s out of your jurisdiction, but my suspicion is that the guy who tried to push my girlfriend into Lake Pontchartrain was an individual some refer to as the ‘Night Watchman’.”

The policeman’s nose and cheeks had been glowing red, but now his blank stare came back.

“Someone who knows,” Tubby went on, “told me that he’s actually a retired policeman named Paul Kronke.”

“I don’t like to hear crap like that about good cops,” Mathewson snarled.

That shut Tubby up. Pretty soon they called it a night and left the bar. They shook hands and each went his own way.

Aimee Thaw sat in Tubby’s office. She had presented herself to Cherrylynn outside, explained that she was a close friend of Angelo Spooner’s, and been quickly ushered into the private office.

“Angelo gave me your name,” the slight woman stated in a brave voice, “and told me to come see you.” Tubby indicated the chair which he had recently had reupholstered in yellow, and she sat on the very edge of it.

“I’m glad you did,” he said. “And I would also like very much to talk to Angelo. Is he all right?”

“I don’t know. I think he must be hiding somewhere.”

“When did you last speak with him?”

“Three days ago, before all these terrible things happened. He was angry about some man trying to put him out of business. But I know that Angelo could not have killed anybody. He is too sweet.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Tubby said. He was so inclined because there had been two axe murders, one at Angelo’s well and the other of some man who ran a Subright sandwich shop. “Fortunately,” he told Aimee, “as far as I know Angelo had no connection to the Subright guy’s beheading, I mean killing. That’s almost a perfect defense.”

The visitor shook her head sadly and her eyes got moist.

“You’re going to tell me something bad, aren’t you?” the lawyer asked.

“That man who was killed outside Subright was my boss, and he took sexual advantage of me.”

Tubby had the impression this woman had never used the word “sexual” before.

“Did Angelo know about this?” he asked resignedly.

She nodded and cried some more.

“That’s not so good. Your friend Mr. Spooner definitely needs help.”

“Please find him for me.”

Tubby wasn’t quite sure he wanted to find a big man with an axe whether or not he sold healing water. “What is your name again?” he asked.

“Aimee. Aimee Thaw.”

“Ms. Thaw, your boyfriend should go to the police and turn himself in.”

“If he would only call me,” she said wetly, “I’d beg him to do that. He truly is a gentle man. I’m sure he didn’t do these horrible, uh, things.”

“Possibly not, but the circumstances do not paint a pretty picture. Did Angelo say why he was giving you my name?”

“Yes. He wanted me to get a lawyer to make Mr. Momback stop harassing me.”

“His murder put a stop to that.”

She nodded and patted her eyes.

“Have you filed a complaint with the government or anyone about the sexual harassment?” Tubby asked.

“No, it all just started a couple of months ago.”

That could be good. Under the applicable statutes it wasn’t too late to complain and sue.

“Was there a pattern of such behavior?”

“Oh, yes! Almost every day I worked. And I don’t think I was the only one.”

“Did it affect your work?”

“I could barely think. I spilled the mayonnaise. My hands were shaking all the time. They’re still shaking. See?”

Tubby could see that. “Why didn’t you quit?” he asked.

“I needed the job!” she exclaimed and started crying again. “Now I don’t have one, and I’m a single mom! And now Angelo’s missing!”

“It’s going to be okay,” Tubby murmured. He fetched a box of Kleenex from the bottom of the cabinet behind him and carried it around his desk. “We’ll try to do something about this.” He patted her on the back.

He buzzed Cherrylynn, and she quickly appeared.

“This is my personal secretary, Ms. Thaw. You met her when you came in. I want you to give her all the details. And Cherrylynn,” he added, “please prepare an engagement letter. I’m going to step out for a few minutes while you get this all sorted out. Have hope, Ms. Thaw, and be sure to let me know the minute you hear from Angelo.”

She nodded faintly, and Tubby scooted.

“There, there.” Cherrylynn put her arm around his new client’s shoulder.

It was an unusual situation, Tubby reflected as he rode the elevator down, complicated by the fact that the harasser was dead. The Subright company, on the other hand, might have vicarious liability, and it surely had plenty of money. Another complicating factor was that Aimee’s boyfriend, Tubby’s potential client, seemed to have committed the murder. “I do hope that Aimee wasn’t involved in that,” he thought as the doors opened.

* * *

From a girlfriend’s garage in Metairie, Nordie called Frenchy Dufour on an untraceable phone.

“They almost got us,” he said, still in a daze from the assault, the escape, the seeming endless series of misfortunes, and the debilitating drugs.

“Who?” Dufour demanded. “Who is they?” He was parked outside Ron’s Famous Crawfish on Broad Street, having staked out the place for two days in hopes that the proprietor would show up. What else could possibly go wrong?

“I only saw one. Some big fat white guy with an axe.”

Dufour knew immediately who it was. Angelo! The fat man at the well.

“He’ll be after me, too!” Dufour screamed and ended the call.

“No doubt,” Nordie said to the dead phone. Gums, in his khaki pants and faded Izod shirt, sat cross-legged beside him on the concrete garage floor. He was under the influence and started singing a country and western song about prison. He had a bandage over the nub of his missing finger and was close to passing out next to a lawnmower. Looking at his pathetic gang of one, Nordie was thinking he ought to cruise onto the I-10 and head East to Florida. Or West to El Paso. But instead of rousing himself up for a trip, Nordie washed a yellow caplet down with Jim Beam and quietly fell into a deep and welcome sleep.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dufour saw someone go into Ron’s Famous Crawfish, and he thought it might be Ron himself. He hopped out of the car and hastened inside. There was the familiar smell of the sea, and a steaming pile of red crawfish was displayed behind the glass, but something was different. There were no customers.

As soon as the door banged shut behind Dufour, with the ring of a bell, the woman behind the counter also disappeared.

“Hey, who’s here?” he shouted. “Ron?”

A burly Asian of indeterminate age dressed in a shiny silver suit came out from the back and entered Dufour’s personal space. His eyes were hidden behind mirror sunglasses.

“You guys ought to franchise this look,” Dufour began, but the man pressed up against his chest and began patting him down.

“I mean, seriously, you look good,” Dufour said as fingers probed in his clothes. “But what’s going on here, bud? Where’s Ron?”

“He’s gone out of business,” the touchy-feely men said. He lifted his sunglasses and parked them in his jet black hair. His black eyes, sunk deeply in the holes above his sharp cheekbones, stared without emotion into those of the would-be entrepreneur. Dufour’s spirits sank to his socks.

The man feigned puzzlement. “We’re in charge here now. Who are you?”

“Me? I’m Frenchy Dufour. I’m buying this store from Ron.”

“That deal is off,” the man said. “You need to disappear like lettuce in a soup or else you’ll be hurt.”

“Hurt? Me? I’ve got money tied up in this place! I’ve paid Ron for it.”

“Bad investment,” the man said. He cut the conversation short by slugging Dufour in the gut.

Dufour bent but did not break. He came up fists flaying like a windmill, the maneuver he had learned in high school, but the guy in the suit quickly wrapped him up, slapped him around, kneed him in the nuts several times, and hustled him out of the store through the back door. Dufour was stripped of his money pouch, which contained almost a grand, and thrown outside beside the dumpster.

It took several minutes for the crippling pain to begin to go away. As it passed, he regained awareness that traffic was passing in the street and that a man on a bicycle had paused to nudge him with his sneaker to see if he was breathing and then had ridden on.

Dufour got back to his feet and tried to wipe the seafood grime off his tailored jacket. He had no immediate desire to investigate who his attacker was or where he might have gone. It was clear as a sunny day that his chances of recovering Cisco’s investment or his own money belt were highly doubtful.

Regaining his composure, Dufour walked awkwardly back to his car.

“Out of misfortune comes opportunity,” he reminded himself while he got behind the wheel and drove across town. That advice had come from a fortune cookie he had found with his fried rice years before, and the message had stuck with him. So he ran through various ways this situation might be salvaged.

Losing Cisco’s money was not necessarily an end-of-life event, after all. Cisco seemed like a nasty little brat, nothing more. On the other hand, he had alluded to powerful financial backers. Dufour considered that if he made a clean breast of things, he could probably still pay the dough back over a year or two, if he had enough good days at the track, if he scored a couple of big drug deals. But becoming a desperate criminal again, the life he had outgrown, really was a miserable prospect. Even thinking about it made him sicker than he already was. Have some balls! he exhorted himself. Don’t be a dummy! Double down!

* * *

Bin Minny wasn’t totally satisfied that a sufficient message had been delivered to Frenchy Dufour.

“Wait a day or two,” he instructed his man in the silver suit. “Then go back and check on Mr. Dufour’s attitude.”

The hood, “Dapa Jack” Nguyen, said, “An ox will stand on his tongue.”

“Take some men with you next time,” Bin Minny said. “Run him off for good.”

* * *

For his day job, when he wasn’t playing the market, Cisco sold cars at Lucky LaFrene’s Chevrolet, Hyundai, Nissan and Isuzu on Veterans Highway, and that’s where Dufour found him, waiting on a customer. Cisco told another salesman to park Frenchy in a glass-walled office.

“Shouldn’t take too long,” the salesman said. “Mr. Bananza is a real fast talker.”

Frenchy sat down on a folding chair. He longed for a vodka and tonic to calm his nerves after his rough ejection from the crawfish shack. He tried to put his thoughts into good order while inspecting his clothes for lingering dirt. Take deep breaths, that’s the best thing.

“How’s it going, Frenchy?” The voice caught him by surprise.

“Hey, Cisco,” he said swinging around. The kid looked pretty good in his blue suede jacket. He had that car dealer’s expression on his face projecting confidence that any problem could be solved. He sat across the plain metal desk and opened with, “How are things? Frenchy? Any new prospects?”

Dufour took a last restorative deep breath and laid it all out. Just the way he imagined things should have gone.

Business was great! he said. Ron’s Famous Crawfish store was in the bag, and the Ron’s brand could easily be expanded soon. The first new location would probably be in Jackson, Mississippi, where there was plenty of pent-up demand for all things Cajun.

Dufour elaborated further. The original crawfish location on Broad Street could probably suck up $10,000 per week from Cisco’s pot, which could immediately be turned around into legitimate money in the bank. The Reverend Horton’s Divine Immersion funeral business up at Lake Pontchartrain also was a good prospect, though the owner wasn’t quite on board yet. No pun intended, ha, ha. All in all, Cisco would soon see not just a plethora of reliable outlets for some of his excess dollars but there were also more deals on the horizon.

That was the reason for this meeting. One particular new and excellent opportunity was staring Dufour right in the face.

“I’ve got a booming bar lined up to join the conglomerate,” he lied. “A joint on St. Claude Avenue that’s got a great name and is primed to grow. Right now it brings in maybe $5,000 cash per week. Nobody would notice a thing if we upped that to $10,000, and this joint just exudes vibe. We can package and reproduce it— in someplace that needs a major dose of cool, like Knoxville or Little Rock, and just keep spreading out from there.”

“Go on,” Cisco said. He liked what he was hearing, but he was waiting for the ask.

The ask this time was for $250,000. In cash, since that’s what these little business people liked.

“Do you know what Cisco means in Spanish?” he asked Dufour, who did not.

“It means Frenchman,” Cisco said. Frenchy and Cisco smiled warmly at each other.

The discussion went back and forth, but Cisco was quite impressed with the ideas he was hearing. It looked like a sure-fire way to put a lot of cash into circulation, run it through the register, deposit it into a bank as legitimate business income, convert it to legal money, and make a handsome profit.

“If I take a chance, it’s you personally on the hook,” he reminded Dufour.

“Oh, sure, I’m clear on that,” Dufour said from the depths of his heart. As he saw it, young Cisco was the one who was taking the hook.

Frenchy might be in a deep hole, but with just a little more scratch to play with he could close all the deals he needed to get back to the surface and make everyone happy, very happy.

Cisco told him to come back later. Frenchy did as he was told, and he was handed an alligator skin attaché case chock full of Ben Franklins. “Screw those Vietnamese,” he thought. Frenchy had a brand new lease on life.

In response to their request, Detective Mathewson admitted Tubby and Cherrylynn into police headquarters to see a video that had been shot from a camera on Broadway Street.